Peterborough Green candidate asks voters not to vote for him
Posted August 21, 2015 1:04 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It appears Peterborough-Kawartha NDP candidate Dave Nickle will be getting a vote in this October’s federal election from someone he didn’t expect – his opponent in the race, Green candidate Gary Beamish.
Beamish told the Peterborough This Week on Wednesday that he is planning to step down from the race after he’s officially nominated on Sept. 28. He is encouraging all of his supporters to vote NDP in hopes Nickle will be able to defeat Conservative candidate Michael Skinner.
“I believe the NDP will keep some of their promises,” Beamish said. “I think the NDP support is going to be pretty solid.”
The reason Beamish is backing out of the campaign is to avoid vote-splitting in the riding which once was held by Dean Del Mastro, former parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In the 2011 election, Nickle finished second to Del Mastro in the riding.
“The message that we want to have out there is, we’re suggesting, it’s country before party,” Michael Bell, head of the party’s riding association, told the Huffington Post.
While Beamish’s name will appear on the Oct. 19 ballot and he will participate in all-candidates debates to speak out against the Conservatives, he doesn’t expect to be nominated in the riding again.
“It’s a one-shot deal for me,” he said. “But I feel this election is important enough.”
